Ion (review)

Abstract

For the past thirty years, the Classical Greek Theatre Festival has been working its way through the entire cannon of extant Greek plays, performing at a number of venues throughout the Salt Lake City area and on tour to colleges throughout the Western states. For their thirtieth anniversary production, they returned to Euripides' Ion, in a new adaptation by David Lan. This production, directed by David Dynak, was a self-consciously postmodern attempt to make Greek theatre both accessible and engaging through a pastiche of contemporary music and dance, a set and costumes evoking pop culture, and an ironic and emotionally distanced acting style. While the provocative set and solid performance of B. Joe Rogan in the title role worked well to achieve the goal, the complexity of this thought-provoking play was undermined by a dancing, singing chorus, inappropriately mismatched costumes, and heightened acting that spilled over into farce.